


Always

by Melina



Category: Highlander
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Valentine's Day, hl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-02-14
Updated: 1999-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:39:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melina/pseuds/Melina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valentine's Day isn't always candy and flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always

Most of the time I adore being Duncan MacLeod’s lover. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Duncan is Immortal, and being Immortal is part of who he is -- it’s as much a part of him as his generous heart and his warm brown eyes. Most days I don’t even think twice about it, most days it’s just a part of our lives that doesn’t come up very often.

And then there are days like today. Valentine’s Day. A day for lovers, yes? We'd planned to go to a fancy restaurant with all the other couples, couples with dreams of growing old together, of sitting on a porch watching their grandchildren. I know that’s not part of our fate. Not only because we can never have children of our own, but because he will never grow old. I will. I will be the one with the grey hair and the afflictions of age. People will someday stop thinking I’m his girlfriend and start thinking I’m his mother. Will they someday think I’m his grandmother, too? And will I be able to handle that? Will he? I’ve never asked, but my guess is that he’s never been with anyone long enough to find these things out.

But on most days I don’t think of such things, and today would have been just like any other day, except I was sitting at my dressing table, brushing my hair, and there it was. Standing out like a sore thumb, wiry and ugly. A grey hair. I’m thirty-three years old, for heaven’s sake! I’m not supposed to have grey hair. I stared at it and stared at it, then I curled the ugly thing around my finger and pulled it out. Hard. And I stared at it for a long time, not just thinking about it for vanity’s sake, but thinking about what it meant. For the first time since Duncan and I had been together, I had proof that I was growing older without him.

I leaned forward and stared in the mirror, and suddenly I could see them -- lines around my eyes. Small ones, yes, they were small now...but what about in three or four more years? Then what would happen? God, at this rate I was going to look like the mother of a four-hundred-year-old man before I reached my fortieth birthday! It wasn’t fair, not fair at all. Suddenly I couldn’t see the hideous little lines in the mirror anymore because my eyes had filled with tears.

"Tess?" I looked up, and Duncan was standing there behind me, his eyes full of concern. I hadn’t heard him come in the bedroom. Oh, God, now what was I going to do? Confess the truth, that the young and vibrant woman he met when she was barely twenty-two was quickly becoming a withered old crone? I couldn’t stand the thought, and I shook my head, catching a sob in my throat.

"Tess? What’s wrong?" He knelt next to the dressing table and took both of my hands in one of his, his other reaching up to wipe a tear from my face. My lined, wrinkled face...

I shook my head again, swallowing more tears. "It’s nothing, Duncan. I’m fine. What time are we supposed to be at the restaurant?" I tried to break free, to move away so I wouldn’t have to see the worried look on his face, but he was having none of it.

"Oh, yeah, right, you usually sit here sobbing when nothing’s wrong." He wrapped one arm around my waist and gently pulled me from the dressing table to the bed, laying me down on my back and propping himself up on one elbow beside me. He reached to the bedside table for a tissue and wiped my eyes again, then leaned over and kissed me once on each eyelid as if his kisses could banish all tears. Maybe they could.

"Want to talk about it?"

I can never keep anything from him, nor he from me. We’ve become far too good at reading each other over the years, and in the end it’s pointless. Either I could tell him then or tell him later. I took a slow, deep breath, the way he always tells me to when I start ranting in a fit of Gallic temperament, and then I said, "I had a grey hair, Duncan."

His eyes met mine for a moment, as if he thought I must be joking, but once he realized I wasn't, he merely answered, "So?"

"So? What do you mean, so?"

"Tess, it’s a grey hair, not a disease."

He’s wrong, I thought, it is a disease, Duncan, don’t you understand? The disease of mortality, I have it and you’re immune. "I’m getting older."

"Well, so am I."

I glared at him for a moment. "You know what I mean. You will get older, but you will not look older. And I will. I will, Duncan. I will get grey hair and wrinkles and..."

He interrupted, "And to me, they will just be signs of your experience and wisdom, Tess. You know when I grew up the elders were the most respected people in my village, even more than the chief? Everyone knew how much they had endured to reach their age, and how much knowledge they had to share. This worship for youth is a modern phenomenon, Tessa. It means nothing."

"Now, maybe." All of my fears coming to the surface, after all this time, over one grey hair? It seemed so silly, yet I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. "What about in a few years, when people see us together, and think what is that handsome young man doing with that old lady..."

He leaned over and quieted me with a kiss, a soft, gentle kiss on my lips. Then he looked up at me again, looked into my eyes with his huge brown ones, those eyes that had seen so much but could never lie to me. "They can think whatever they want. And if they ask, I’ll tell them the truth." He paused a moment, and unconsciously I held my breath. "I’ll just tell them that I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, and that I’ve been in love with you for every single moment since then. And that I’ll love you forever."

My breath finally came rushing out in a gasp, and for some reason my fear seemed to be buried under Duncan’s love, just overwhelmed by it, a darkness no longer able to sustain the energy to exist in a world filled with Duncan MacLeod’s light. He kissed me again before he spoke. "Tessa, you are a beautiful woman, and I adore your beauty. But there is so much more inside of you worth loving. Never forget that, okay?"

I nodded wordlessly, what could I say? There weren’t words for how much I loved him, for how much his love meant to me. His lips met mine again, our kiss deeper this time, my mouth opening under his, tasting Duncan’s tender warmth. His mouth finally moved from mine, tracing a path down my chin, and as always, my head dropped back, hungry for his kisses on my neck. He smiled, slipping the dressing gown from my shoulders, and when I saw the desire in his eyes, a delicious swirl started in my stomach, sending a flush through my entire body.

I needed him, and soon I was whispering his name over and over as he kissed his way across my neck and between my breasts. I tugged at the shoulder of his T-shirt, and he obligingly stopped long enough to pull it off so I could feel the smooth warmth of his bare skin underneath my fingers as he feathered tiny kisses across one breast, finally, finally licking one nipple.

"Oh, God, Duncan..."

He smiled up at me before reaching out with his tongue to lick the nipple again teasingly, then he finally took it in his mouth, his hand reaching over to caress the other at the same time. He slid between my legs then, his free hand parting my thighs ever so gently, one hand sliding over my sex lightly, hardly touching, just teasing me. "You drive me so crazy," I gasped.

He lifted his head from my breast to smile at me lovingly. "Good, I like you crazy." He leaned over and captured my mouth with his, and I could feel him rise to his knees as he kissed me. I reached for him, and traced my hands over his waist and groin as we kissed. I could hear his moan under his breath as I traced the outline of his rigid sex through his slacks, slowly, lovingly. I pressed just a little more firmly before I reached for the button at the waist, and this time he pulled away just a bit and sat up, his eyes meeting mine as I unbuttoned and unzipped his slacks, pushing them over his hips. As I gazed into his eyes, full of desire and love for me, I felt a moment of shame for doubting him, for thinking that our love was so shallow.

I tried to chase the thought away, to make it up to him as best I could. Smiling, I reached up and pressed against his shoulders, pushing him onto his back. Then he smiled, and I thought, ah, not so in control now, are you, Duncan? Four hundred years of experience will get you nowhere, now. He watched me as I gently tugged at his trousers, pulling them down and off. He was wearing white briefs, and I left them for the moment, sliding between his knees to caress his chest instead. So broad, so strong; just like him. Solid, but not inflexible, either. And so sensitive! He groaned a little as I traced fingernails over his chest, tracing his nipples without touching just as he had done to me a few moments earlier. His breathing sped up just a bit, and I felt his hardness against my thigh. Mmmm. So good, Duncan, I love feeling your body underneath mine...

I slid one hand behind his neck, reaching up for a long, slow kiss, our lips and tongues melting so far into one another that I could hardly tell where I ended and he began. He grew more aroused, his erection was pulsing against me, and slowly, with what he calls my "wicked grin," I slid down his body, licking and kissing his chest and his stomach. I started to slide his briefs off his hips, but I stopped to trace my mouth over the cotton covering his erection, opening my lips to slide my tongue over his sex. Even through the cotton, he felt hot and so very alive.

"Jesus, Tess..." I love his voice like that, rough and throaty. I nuzzled him again, opening my mouth, taking the tip of his sex inside. He arched towards me, and his groan told me that I’d done enough teasing. I smiled up at him again, trying for my "angelic smile" instead of the wicked grin this time. I peeled down his briefs quickly, pulling them off his legs. My hands and mouth were on him before his naked sex could even register in my brain. My senses felt overloaded, like they do when I’m really feeling like I’m part of a sculpture, just an extension of the clay or metal under my hands. His sharp-sweet taste, his scent -- sweat mixed with arousal; the feel of his sex and his thighs under my hands; his voice in my ears and the sight of him when I glanced at his face, his eyes closed and his head tossed back...overload, that’s what it was. Nothing but Duncan invading my brain, my senses...the rest of the world could have just evaporated, and I doubt I’d have noticed.

I enjoy making love to him that way so much that I barely noticed his hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me away. "Tess...wait..." I heard distantly. I pause and look up at him, and his expression changed from one of physical desire to one of simple joy.

"Hrm? _Oui_?" French starts to slip in when I don’t pay attention.

"_Viens à moi_," he commanded, pulling me back to his mouth, his hands sliding up to tangle in my hair. His thigh pressed between mine, and he gently rolled us onto our sides. One of my legs slipped around his hip without my even thinking about it. Hardly moving, he slipped inside me then, so easily...as if he belonged there. And he does, he always feels so good, not just his body filling mine but his soul filling mine too. Our eyes held as we moved gently back and forth, neither of us wanting to risk the perfect symmetry as we lay side by side. I love it that way, nobody on top, neither of us dominating the other...like that, we own each other, perfectly and equally, by choice and with love.

But the way he moved against me was too perfect, and I could feel us both reaching a peak before I was ready for it to end. The connection, the closeness, it was too good, and I wanted to hang onto it. He buried his head in my neck, kissing from my throat to my ear and back again, his fingers still exploring every inch of my face and scalp. He tightened around me, and I locked my leg around his; the need built slowly as we found perfect rhythm together.

His moans became even more throaty then, matching my shallow gasps, and I heard him whispering, in English, in French, but in other languages too, "Je t’aime, Tessa, toujours..." He grasped me even tighter as his passion poured into me, his eyes holding mine until I followed moments later, my body seizing against his.

He didn’t let me go, and I didn’t want him to. Our noses rubbed together, and we kissed softly, sweetly this time. He repeated the words he’d said moments ago, at the height of passion, the calm in his voice lending even more weight to them. "I love you, Tessa. Always."

Always, I thought. No past, no present, no future. Is that what his life was like? The worries over grey hair seemed like folly then, just a vain indulgence...Duncan would love me for as long as I was here; in my heart, I knew that. Maybe my worries weren’t for me, they were really for him. I could comfort myself with the thought that someone would love me long after I was gone, that someone would remember me for centuries, forever, even. But he's the one who would have to live with the memories, he's the one who would have to cope with the loss someday...how did he do it? So much easier, really, to cope with wrinkles and grey hairs...

He kissed me again, distracting me from my thoughts.

"I love you, Duncan MacLeod," I said firmly, gazing deeply into his soft, beautiful eyes.

He just smiled and kissed me again. "Mmmm..." he mumbled as he nuzzled my ear. I laughed as his nose tickled my neck and ear.

"Duncan?"

"Mmmm?" was the only response.

"Do you mind if we don’t go to dinner? I’m not very hungry...for food, anyway," I smiled.

He looked up at me, his eyebrows raised. "You sure you want to spend Valentine’s Day here? Not go out or anything?"

"Yes, Duncan. I’m sure." I was very sure, and I wasn’t sorry. A crowd of people when I could be in Duncan’s arms, in his bed? Never. Alone together...wherever we are, there’s really nowhere I’d rather be. Always.

~~~~~~

February 14, 1995

Duncan MacLeod closed the journal gently, placed it on the table, then stood and moved to the porthole. He simply stood quietly, gazing out at the Seine. He loved the journals, and he hated them, too; there was no way he could feel closer to her, nor was there anything that could make him feel her loss more profoundly.

He swallowed roughly, determined to restrain the tears. His eyes filled anyway, and he blinked rapidly. He closed his eyes, trying to fill his memory with images of Tessa, alive and loving and glorious. Experience told him that the emptiness in his heart would fade in time, and the love would remain. He grasped that knowledge now and held it close as the pain welled deep inside of him.

"_Toujours_, Tessa," he whispered. "Always."

~ end ~

_Posted February 14, 1999._


End file.
